Our Journey Toward Public EV Quick-Charging Begins

VACAVILLE, California — The longest journey starts with a single step, the saying goes, and our first step toward a public EV quick-charge infrastructure has been taken in a small city north of San Francisco.

Vacaville is the first city in the United States to install a public DC quick-charge (aka Level 3) station. The 50-kilowatt charger, about the size of a gas pump, can “fill” an EV’s battery to 80 percent in around half an hour. That’s glacial compared to filling your gas tank, but EV advocates see quick chargers being installed at restaurants, supermarkets and other places you’ll leave the car for awhile.

A broad network of quick chargers would go a long way toward helping push EVs into the mainstream, which is why EV advocates are excited to see the Eaton charger go up in Vacaville.

“The reason it’s a big deal is there’s all this talk about range anxiety,” said Paul Scott, a founder and board member of the advocacy group Plug In America. “This should allay any range anxiety questions. Yes, this is the first one. But it shows this is possible and it is coming. We know there will be hundreds, even thousands of them.”

Although DC quick-charging has long been used to keep heavy machinery like forklifts rolling, the technology is only now appearing in public for EVs. Japan leads the way with 182 quick-chargers installed around the country.

Mass-market cars with cords hit the road in December when the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt appear. Most electric cars will be plugged in at home or work, but we’ll need a public charging infrastructure if EVs are to catch on. A typical EV takes as long 16 hours to charge when plugged into a 110-volt wall socket, and using a 220 requires six or eight. That’s not going to do anyone any good on a long trip because, the Tesla Roadster aside, the range of the EVs coming down the pike maxes out at 100 miles.

DC quick-charging can have the Mitsubishi i-MiEV ready to roll in as little as 10 minutes.

“This is a way to extend the functionality of an electric vehicle for people beyond their regular commute,” said David Patterson, senior manager of regulatory affairs for Mitsubishi.

Mitsubishi turned us loose in one of its i-MiEV electric cars to see the Eaton quick-charge station in action.

We’ve driven the i-MiEV before, and it’s a peppy little runabout. Propulsion comes from a 47-kilowatt (64 horsepower) permanent-magnet motor. The juice is stored in a 16 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery with a projected range topping out at 80 miles. The i-MiEV (pronounced i-meev, a name Mitsubishi really ought to consider changing) is based on the Mitsubishi i, a tiny runabout sold in Japan.

The i-MiEV isn’t very quick, and it is tiny — 11 feet long and less than 5 feet wide. It’s no surprise Mitsubishi will market the car as an urban runabout when it comes to the United States late next year. No word price, but Mitsubishi’s shooting for $20,000 to $30,000 after the $7,500 federal EV tax credit. It will have to keep the price low to compete with the Leaf, which is bigger, has better (claimed) range and costs $25,280 after the tax credit.

Despite its Lilliputian dimensions, the i-MiEV is surprisingly roomy and comfortable inside. It’s just the thing for tooling around town — which is exactly what Ian Woodfin does with it. He works for Best Buy, which is testing four i-MiEV electric cars in its Geek Squad fleet, and spends his days running around San Francisco making calls in an i-MiEV. He loves it.

“It’s great,” he says. “The best thing about it is not stopping at the gas station.”

Woodfin finds the car perfect around town and says it’s decent enough on the highway so long as you mind your acceleration to maximize range and you have a place to charge up at the end. We made the 55-mile drive from San Francisco to Vacaville without trouble but wouldn’t have made it much further than that.

“Two bars to spare, out of 16,” Woodfin said, looking at the battery gauge — Mitsubishi calls it a “state of charge indicator” — on the dashboard.

The ability to go 70 miles on a charge is sufficient for most needs because according to the Department of Transportation, most of us don’t drive more than 40 miles a day. But there are occasions where you’ll need to reel off a couple of hundred miles in a day. That’s where quick-chargers come in.

We plugged the i-MiEV into the Eaton charger and were ready to roll 25 minutes later. That’s all the time the charger needed to “fill” the i-MiEV’s battery to an 80 percent state of charge. Don’t have 25 minutes? Mitsubishi says 10 minutes on a quick-charger will get the battery to 50 percent. Why only 80 percent? Because the amount of time needed to get that last 20 percent rises quickly to an hour or more, Patterson said. The point of Level 3 charging to to get as much juice into the pack as quickly as possible.

The quick charger is one of seven EV chargers installed at a charging “island” behind a Sonic just off Interstate 80 — and one of 45 installed in Vacaville, a city of 100,000 people. The Eaton unit draws 150 to 200 amps at 208 volts and it costs $40,000, so it isn’t the kind of thing you’re going to install in your garage. But Eaton says it is receiving inquiries from shopping centers, retail chains and housing developers.

“We’re seeing a lot of private interest from businesses that want to get ahead of the curve,” said Tim Old, a marketing manager for Eaton. “A lot of them want to become EV-ready.”

There are still a lot of questions about the technology, not the least of which who’s going to pay for the juice. Some businesses in EV-crazy towns along the West Coast offer free 110-volt or 220-volt charging because they know it will draw customers — much like coffee shops offer free wi-fi.

“I have the choice of three different grocery stores,” Scott said. “I chose the one that has an electric charger. Businesses will learn that people will spend money in your store if you have a charger for them. My wife will spend $80 on groceries and get 20 cents worth of electricity.”

Of course, the math changes with a quick-charger, which might “pump” two or three bucks of power into a car while you’re shopping. There will have to be some way of charging people for that power. And we’ll need lots of chargers to keep people from waiting in long lines. And then there’s the question of standardization. Although so-called Level 1 (110 volt) and Level 2 (220) charging uses the standard SAE J1772 plug, there’s no agreement on a quick-charging plugs or interfaces.

Here again the Japanese are leading the way with CHAdeMO, a standardized DC charging interface embraced by Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi and Subaru. (CHAdeMO is a riff on “charge de move,” which roughly means “charge for moving.” It’s also a pun on the Japanese “O cha demo ikaga desuka,” which means “Let’s have a tea while charging.”) Although Japanese automakers have embraced the standard, so far they’re alone. The Society of Automotive Engineers is looking at the issue, but given how long it took to settle on J1772, it’s anyone’s guess when we might see something sorted out for DC quick charging.

But these questions aside, the lone DC charger standing outside a Sonic in Vacaville is a signpost toward the future.

UPDATE, 2 p.m. Eastern to explain why the charger takes a pack to only 80 percent and to mention the Ecotality-Nissan project.

Mitsubishi’s cute little EV is slated to arrive in the United States late next year. It’s based on a Japanese kei car, which means it’s tiny, but it’s surprisingly roomy inside and well suited to urban commuting.